Interview with the Author of ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON: A Story in Poems: Julie Williams
Conducted by: Peter Klaus

When did you first know you wanted to be a writer?

I was a writer a long time before I knew I wanted to be a writer. In high school, I wrote in order to have a place to release my feelings -- feelings about my father, who had died when I was just turning 11, feelings about the boys I was interested in, anger with my mother, fears of my grandparents getting sick and dying, too, not to mention all the rivalries and frustrations of friends and school. I wrote journal entries and stories and poems. I went off to college thinking I would be an English major, but back then teachers were so discouraging to young women who wanted to be writers. Our creative writing teacher in college said right out to the entire class that women could never be "real writers." So I decided to keep my writing to myself and that's what I did for a long time. I was in my twenties working as an actress when I let some theatre friends read my poems and when they told me that I was a writer, suddenly it felt like I had permission to think of myself that way again, too.

Any tips or advice for a teen who wants to be a writer one day?

Writers write. Write about anything and everything. Dig down deep and write your feelings. And most of all, write what you see. Don't worry about whether what you write is any good or not. Carry a notebook with you (my friend gave me a tiny one that hangs around my neck on a chain!). When you see a story or a poem, write it down. When you see a crazy character, write her or him down. Stories and poems and crazy characters are all around us all the time. Writers write. If you want to be a writer, just keep writing and never let anything or anyone stop you!

What is your "Anti-Drug?" The hobby, person, or interest that has kept you away from using illegal drugs.

My anti-drug is my journal. I've been keeping a journal off and on since I was 12. Keeping a journal is like opening up a conversation with yourself when there's absolutely no one else you can talk to. The journal helps you to know yourself better. The more aware you are of WHO you are, the less likely you are to do things that will cause harm to yourself. And a journal doesn't have to be just writing -- you can put photos in it or pictures you tear out of magazines, you can draw in it or paste stuff in it. It can be any size, or you can be a notebook fanatic like I am and have half a dozen different kinds of notebooks going all the time. There have been times in my life when really bad things were happening and I know that being able to turn to my journal and write about it kept me safe.

If you weren't a writer, what do you think you would be doing today?

It's hard for me to think of doing anything other than this, but that's because I've had so many different jobs. I've been an actress, a seamstress, an academic advisor, a costumer, a theatre director, a secretary, an administrative assistant, a teacher, a workshop leader, and a coordinator of events and programs. I've done marketing and public relations, dabbled in graphic design, and helped design databases. I've worked in colleges and universities, in hospitals, and in businesses. For a short time I even made veggie and fruit platters for a Hollywood caterer. Almost all of those jobs gave me a degree of satisfaction. In fact, I have an MFA degree in Acting and Directing! The one thing that ties them all together is that during all of them I was "also writing." I'm so happy that I am able to be a writer today.

What is your favorite book?

I don't have one favorite book, but I do have a favorite author. I love any book that was written by Lucy Maud Montgomery. She was a Canadian author who wrote around the turn of the 20th century. You might know her for her ANNE OF GREEN GABLES series. My favorites of her books are the three Emily books (EMILY OF NEW MOON, EMILY CLIMBS, EMILY'S QUEST). I love Lucy Maud Montgomery because she writes with such insight about people -- country people and city people and all their loves and hates and jealousies and trials and tribulations. She writes with love and humor and an amazing understanding of what makes people tick. Even though most of her books were written nearly 100 years ago, they still ring true today because she understands human nature so well.

Can you tell us a little about your inspiration for the story behind ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON?

The poems that started this book came from my memories of my family and of life growing up in Northern Minnesota. One theme directly from my family experiences was the theme of surviving loss. I wanted to look at how sometimes terrible losses can help us to become more and better than who we were and then sometimes we can lose ourselves in the losses and never recover. Living with and never fully understanding racial intolerance also resonated with my experiences. Allie and her family and friends are all fictional characters, but in the act of transformation that was necessary in order to turn those original family poems into a full-length novel, I also learned a great deal about myself. I learned a great deal about my family, too.

ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON is unusual -- a novel written in verse. Do you think of yourself as a 'novelist' or as a 'poet' -- or can they be one and the same thing?

I think of myself as a writer who is a poet AND a novelist, and I am so excited that this form allows me to be both at the same time. This is a challenging form because the writer wants the poems to stand on their own as much as possible, but when put together they must tell a coherent story. So all the strong points of a novel have to be in place -- there has to be a beginning, middle, and end. There have to be clear plot points and a driving action. The main character has to undergo some kind of important transformation that is revealed throughout the story and comes to a climax at the end. And it all has to be done in poems, which are by their nature, fragments, glorying in what they leave out! This is truly a challenge, one I love so much I am currently working on two other books using this form!

Read the first chapter of ESCAPING TORNADO SEASON: A Story in Poems